Lots of obvious astroturfing going on regarding this. I’ve seen this news everywhere from Slashdot to Reddit with people sucking Microsofts dick. It’s either that, or people are too young to remember the bullshit Microsoft pulled … since forever basically. People aren’t going to benefit from this merger. Microsoft is patient. Embrace, extend, extinguish is their strategy. 10 year agreements are nothing for them to wait out.
And it’s the same with every merger – “This will bring more competition, blah blah blah”, then merger goes through and half the people are fired, half the rest are rolled into existing systems, and some empty shell of the previous company just wanders along with no real spirit any longer.
I’m not happy with the state of consolidation in every market under the sun, but I’m sure as shit happy Bobby Kotick is finally going to fuck off and I’m happy I’ll be able to play activision games on gamepass. When gamepass inevitably enshitifies I’ll just get rid of my subscription.
Yeah I can see that. Nadella brought new energy and almost made MSFT look cool, but years later we can see how MSFT is basically gobbling up everything in every domain.
Update: Why am I being downvoted? Did you all forget that MSFT has acquired LinkedIn, GitHub, Mojang, Bethesda, ABK and 49% stake in OpenAI all under Satya? Each one of those are massive acquisitions.
Microsoft are far, far, far from being close to the leader in the market even with ABK on their books, so your FUD makes no sense. Pretty much no one in the entire industry is against the acquisition apart from their main competitor, Sony, who are the market leader and abuse that position every day of the year to pull content away from Microsoft.
ABK will operate like they do currently, just like Bethesda do, only now they have Microsoft money and backing.
The only people that this deal is bad for are people who only play on PlayStation consoles. Everyone else benefits.
You said nothing will change. They will be part of the microcrap veil and will follow their ways of doing things. Like not hire people and only contract for 18 months then get in new contractors to pick up where the recently fired left off… Like what happened at 343i.
According to the article the old leadership wanted to share the bonus with the whole development team of around 100 people. I don’t think the motivation of the team will be great now that the publisher pushed the bonus in unreachable distance. Fucking assholes can’t even stand by their own promises.
According to the wiki page… “In May 2024, Take-Two announced it would shut down Intercept Games but continue to update Kerbal Space Program 2 under the Private Division label.”
I wonder how will they manage that logistically. They are firing every single developer from IG. Who exactly in Private Division is going to be doing the updating? I suspect they will just brush a little of the code that is ready, then completely abandon the product in a year or so.
Warner bros has no idea how to media anymore. They forgot about looney tunes characters. They cancel their movies after shooting before release. They do t make dlc for games that sold like hotcakes. All they did was patent the nemesis system. what the fuck are they doing?
im super on the fuck unity train right now but like, real normal people work there that need employ and have families to support. I hope unity changes course due to public sentiment but i don’t really think that death threats forcing an office closed are going to be the way to invite that change
I think it’s more the “find employment” thing, not the “piece of shit” thing. Tech companies have been doing massive layoffs recently so the market is flooded with people looking for jobs when fewer places are hiring.
Tech companies have been doing massive layoffs recently
A. Sort of big, not recession-inducing.
B. Intentionally done by the larger companies to price-fix the tight job market so they don’t have to pay so much.
I hope they do. But for now I’d rather them not all lose work overnight, nor do I want all of the indie devs getting blindsided by these changes to unity to have to give up on, port, or delist their projects. I want unity to change for the better more than I want them to crash and burn. But I do think this will serve as an awakening for some segments of the industry to not put all their eggs in one basket with a company as greedy as unity. I hope Godot takes off in use, or Epic keeps using fortnite money to make unreal an attractive development platform and continues to be a good steward of it. That’s wishful thinking though, given the current state of unity lol
The investigation found that Barrett called lower-level female employees attractive, asked them to play truth-or-dare and made references to his wealth and power within the studio, suggesting that he could help advance their careers, according to two people familiar with the case.
In a statement to Bloomberg News, Barrett said that throughout nearly 25 years at Bungie, “I feel that I have always conducted myself with integrity and been respectful and supportive of my colleagues, many of whom I consider my closest friends. I never understood my communications to be unwanted and I would have never thought they could possibly have made anyone feel uncomfortable. If anyone ever felt that way about their interaction with me, I am truly sorry.”
Uh…
That might hold water if it was just casual flirting (though you should seriously be trained at any company near that scale that even that with anyone in your “chain of command” puts them in a really bad spot). But not for (alleged) open quid pro quo.
Seriously, I just finished my annual “preventing harassment’ training and there’s a whole section on power differential and how just asking puts employees in a bad spot. Just…don’t.
It’s one thing to say “your hair looks nice today, Susan.” I don’t think 99% of people would take that as anything beyond an innocent compliment.
Asking to play truth or dare is another thing entirely, and I have a sneaking suspicion that the guy saying that, probably isn’t going to just be complimenting Tina’s earrings
Ahh fuck, stuff being published by them was usually a decent sign that it'd be interesting in some way. Best of luck to the actual team, I hope they can put something new together
$200M ain’t no pocket change. One would hope such high-profile failures as this or Avengers would curb execs enthusiasm for live service games, but I’m not holding my breath.
The article even cites all of the similar flops prior to Suicide Squad not deterring leadership on their plan for Suicide Squad. Someone else out there is still making that same mistake. Like Bungie with Marathon, for example.
Sucks for the low level employees losing their jobs, but I can’t possibly feel bad about Epic losing money. Garbage company that needs to lose their grip on the industry after the shit they pulled with Epic Game Store and buying up games/studios just to delist their games from Steam, axe the Linux support, and make them exclusives on the worst platform in gaming.
Of course the companies pin the graphics as a culprit. Otherwise they would have to admit the mismanagement is the reason they burn through millions of dollars. Mismanagement brings with it another aspect the author did not mention: stress and burnout. Either working too hard, or spinning wheels doing nothing is pure poison to a creative person. Constant direction changes, lack of clear communication, never knowing whether you did well or are on the verge of being laid off - all these make people work harder but output less/worse quality assets.
Wow, this guy has serious punchable face energy. It’s not even that interesting, the leakers he catches (or at least the only ones he talks about) are really dumb (one is a child who data mined!).
bloomberg.com
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